Recent Viewpoints

Kerby Anderson The Environmental Protection Agency recently unveiled an online tool that is supposed to help local officials see the dangers of climate change in their community. The Climate Change Adaptation Resource Center provides a map that warns of the danger of climate change to each of the eight regions of the United States. These dire warnings were too much for Dr. William M. Briggs who has been questioning many of the claims of climate change activists. In his column,…

Kerby Anderson Over the years, I have talked about how social media like Facebook and YouTube have sometimes censored conservative and Christian content. Facebook, for example, a few years ago pulled a page by former Governor Mike Huckabee that called for a “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day.” Later it was added back to Facebook. Lila Rose had her investigative reports on Planned Parenthood pulled from YouTube. And I might mention that the Apple store sometimes has pulled iPhone apps for groups like…

Penna Dexter An important book landed at #1 this summer on the non-fiction New York Times bestseller list. It’s currently #3. Its title is  Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Culture and Family in Crisis. This book is important right now because it helps us understand the lives of a people, a whole culture in Appalachia whose circumstances and problems weigh heavily in this election cycle. The author, J.D. Vance, is 31 years old. He was born and grew up…

Twenty years ago, no nation on earth endorsed legal same-sex marriage. Now same-sex marriage is everywhere. How did this happen? That is what Dr. Albert Mohler attempts to answer in his new book, We Cannot Be Silent. He was on my radio program to talk about his book. He explains that this didn’t start with same-sex marriage. First, we had a sexual revolution. Initially some of the legal and cultural battles were over issues like birth control and contraception. America…

The editorial drumbeat against guns continues while the evidence mounts that gun deaths are decreasing. Two articles from last week illustrated these contradictory claims. The editorial board of the New York Times attacked what is called the “fantasy” that carrying a concealed weapon makes you safer. Meanwhile, Pew Research reported that the “nation’s overall gun death rate has decline 30% since 1993.” The New York Times editorial cited statistics from the Violence Policy Center that “since 2007, at least 763…

Numerous surveys suggest that the millennial generation is quite willing to reject the Bible and Christian faith. In the past, it was seen as a road map for life. Now, if it is considered at all, is often seen as merely a book of suggestions. Ken Ham’s latest book, Ready to Return, documents this secular trend and provides recommendations on how to reverse this trend. The book is the third book in a trilogy. The first book, Already Gone, showed…

When a cold-case detective decides to use his analytical skills to evaluate the Bible or the evidence for God, it can be a fascinating journey. In his previous book, Cold Case Christianity, J. Warner Wallace applied time-tested investigative tools and techniques to evaluate the claims of the gospels. This time his book, God’s Crime Scene, applies those same techniques to examine the universe as a crime scene. He invites the reader to sit on a jury as he makes a…

How bad is the economy? Many people believe it is still in bad shape. Others don’t see any problem. They will point to a low unemployment rate, record corporate profits, and a booming stock market. The difference in perspective is explained in a recent column on, Why This Feels Like a Depression for Most People. It begins with this simple observation. “Everyone has seen the pictures of the unemployed waiting in soup lines during the Great Depression. When you try…

Penna Dexter It would be nice if the current presidential campaign were more about issues and less about personalities. Then maybe we’d be hearing more from the campaign trail about the collapse of what was supposed to be healthcare reform under the Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare. Former President Bill Clinton did bring up one aspect of this in a speech last week in Flint, Michigan. It was a powerful commentary on the health care law’s impact on the consumer….

Kerby Anderson The fastest growing religious group of our time is the group of young people who check “none” or “none of the above” on religious survey questions. Social scientists therefore refer to them as “the nones.” A few years ago, I did some commentaries about the “nones” but wanted to revisit this topic because we now have more survey statistics that illustrate their growth. From the 1930s to the 1990s, the percentage of “nones” in America was less than…

Kerby Anderson According to Jonah Goldberg, our political culture seems to be obsessed with narrative building. This is an effort by the speaker to connect the dots between a selective number of facts and statistics to prove a point. Trial lawyers understand how important this is. Our minds look for patterns but are often blocked from seeing them because there might be contradictory facts and data. Shape the narrative into a compelling story, and the jury will arrange the facts…